Cooking With Collard Greens: How to Get More of This Nutritional Powerhouse Into Your Diet

It’s no secret that collard greens and other cruciferous vegetables are good for you. With an ANDI score of 1,000, they’re pretty tough to beat when it comes to nutrition. They’re also a perennial plant in certain climates, making them a low-fuss food source for savvy home gardeners. For the rest of us, they’re just good cheap food. Collard greens are typically priced around $2 per large bunch at my local grocery store, and sauté easily in a pan for a simple and nutritional dinner side.

TWO SIMPLE IDEAS FOR COLLARD GREEN RECIPES

Sautéed Collard Greens

You can sauté them down plain, or pair them with something else for texture and seasoning. These gingery collards with black-eyed peas are a tasty way to enjoy vegan collard greens (plus you get extra protein with the black eyed peas), and mincing down a link of turkey kielbasa to enjoy with sautéed collard greens is a great fat-saving tip for the meat-eating crowd.

Collard Rolls

While I grew up with stuffed cabbage rolls, the truth is I prefer my cabbage raw or only slightly cooked. So I was completely excited to discover collard rolls as a comparable substitute. Just consider them a Southern equivalent to the stuffed grape leaves so popular throughout the Mediterranean and Middle East. The barbecue black-eyed-pea-stuffed collard rolls featured in the cookbook Veganomicon are quite delectable, and these grit-stuffed collard rolls have down-home hospitality written all over them. You can get as creative with the stuffing ideas as you want. The point is that this is a great way to get more collard greens in your diet on a regular basis while still preparing something that your family will consider fun to have on their plates.

Collard greens are one of the healthiest foods around, and with their relatively permanent frugal price tag, it just makes good sense to figure out how to work them into your family menus as often as possible. Do you have a way to serve collard greens that your family finds pleasing? Share a link to your favorite recipe below.

Editor’s Note: If you’d like to get more cruciferous vegetables into your diet affordably, consider incorporating some frozen broccoli recipes, steamed kale or some new cauliflower recipes to replace those go-to mashed potatoes.